Thinking of switching careers to become a teacher - thoughts?

[Bettymum]

I have a science degree but I'm an accountant, so I get well paid but I have a long commute, long hours, and I've been doing this for 16 years [old emoticon] and frankly I've had enough and I miss my children.
DD will be starting school next September, DS will only be 30 months.
So...am I mad to consider jacking in my job and retraining as a primary teacher? I want to do something that adds value to society, and other than being a good parent, surely being a good teacher is adding huge value. I know I will take a massive paycut but I think we could manage.
Opinions from primary teachers please! Am I insane or do you love your job?

ok; sorry for being a judgypants with you

My lessons are quite similar to two years ago apart from where there have been exam syllabus changes. I will tweak them perhaps add new examples but I am too busy to reinvent the wheel.

I don't work in the holidays a great deal because I think work gets enough of my time for the rest if the year . I am in school from 7 in the morning until 6pm and then have a few hours of marking or planning at home most evenings. I have my own child and it would be ridiculous to sacrifice her wellbeing any more for the sake of other children. I would just be creating work for her teachers.

As for marking time a set of books takes on average 90 minutes. I have 13 classes plus A level. It is certainly more than 20 mins a week!

We work on a Creative Curriculum and topics are never repeated ( or haven't been yet!) which means Literacy, History, Geography, Art, DT and Music ( which are all linked to the curriculum) are new every year. PE and RE run on a four year cycle-so conceivably plans could be re-used every four years, Science on a 2 year cycle-but linked as much as possible to CC so will definitely need tweaking. Maths could conceivably be repeated every year-although as I have mixed age children they would notice if they did the same year after year ( and last year, a third of my children were high level 5's, this year they definitely are not!)
All this means that it is difficult to simply use last years planning-especially as we change classes every 2-3 years! Decent planning ( and finding appropriate resources ) takes time!

I'm with you, twinklytroll. I work in the evenings, but my holidays are for me and ds, to make it up to him for being such a shite busy mummy the rest of the time.

I teach the same things every year although there may be a slight focus change, or a change in order of the lessons. Some of my Year 10 and 11 topics have switched, for example.

I don't take books home to mark, but do a lot of research at home. I do not watch 'entertainment' TV - it is all documentaries for me. I bring this info into my lessons where relevant. I also trawl the internet for lesson ideas, and try out practicals at home, often buying my own materials from Ebay.

Although I don't do specific schoolwork in the holidays, my radar is always on when I take my own children to museums (complete with thinking about risk assessments). It's impossible to completely switch off.

What subject do you teach, MindtheGappp?

And I thought you regularly changed your lessons depending on the individual styles of the learners?

Why do you have to be so unpleasant, Feenie?

I would think as all teachers together, we could build on one another's experiences.

Sigh.

Have some vinegar with your chips.

Not unpleasant - merely curious as to which subject you teach, especially since you can mark it in 20 mins (and so a bit , too!). Just askin'.

And I couldn't resist the remark about learning styles, after all that sanctimonious spouting you were doing this morning about changing your teaching to suit individual learners - if you pitch up just hours later claiming you only rarely need to do a 'slight focus change', then you can expect to get called on it. It was slightly tongue in cheek though, so it's a shame you're in a huff.

Nice idea, but I suspect any building on our experiences stop short at your 75 minute lunch break (Ha! What's one of those?!) and your 20% non-contact time - that's a very different teaching experience to mine.

Actually, you are very unpleasant.

This begs the question, why?

My subject changes so much each year with new ideas/news/wars etc that spark new debates that I rarely use the same plans each year. The themes are broadly the same but I cannot teach in a bubble that ignores major world events.

It's not unpleasant to remind someone of what they said only this morning!

Convince yourself, Feenie. Ask yourself why you are so insecure. Your posts are very telling. I feel sad for you.

Norfolk, the basic framework of my lessons runs for three or four years but the illustrations have to be bang up to date. I often find things in the news that very week to back up my lessons.

I think I would get personally bored if I had to deliver the same lesson the third time.

Nice diversion! Except it isn't.

You are perfectly entitled to your opinions. However, you are making a bit of an eejit of yourself by then point blank refusing to discuss any of them - it rather contravenes the raison d'etre of a discussion board.

And I'm not the first person to point out today that you keep contradicting yourself.

I'm not sure why you saw fit to personally attack me. It is fine to challenge my views but starting out by mocking me and calling me an eejit is not very commendable.

I gave fairly mildly contrary views that could easily have been challenged in an honourable way - I was open tomthat. You chose a different approach. I'm puzzled as to why, given that I don't know you or your situation. You can keep calling me an eejit (are we still in the 70s?), and some of your mud will stick and appeal to people of a similar mindset. It will not change facts, or my resolve, and will serve to illustrate yourself.

You are, so far, confirming my views of state education and convicting me that my choices are for the best. I thank you for that. Have a nice dY.

MTG I'm the same with news items, I am forever scouring newspapers for my news wall to help debate in my lessons. The 9/11 anniversary led to lots of interesting lessons.

Mindthegappp, I am not personally attacking you. I am reminding you that this morning you claimed to change lessons if necessary to suit individual learners, and pointing out that this is at odds with what you have said here about planning.

Not sure why you should be quite so hysterical about your contradiction being pointed out.

Oh, and rofl that I am confirming your views of state education, that's very funny

Yes, Norfolk. I have had to be on top on CERN (particles travelling faster than the speed of light) and the satellite falling out of the sky in the last couple of weeks.

I do love it, thoug, But with e CERN thing, I couldn't really wing it - I had to have a personal position. Thankfully, the interest only lasted a day or two. :)

Ah I use CERN too but for the universe creation side, linking into Dan Brown's Angel & Demons!

I love the diversity it brings to the classroom.

People are just pointing out, MTG, that perhaps your teaching experience is very different to most other teachers' because you would appear to work in a private school and have, by your own admission, twice as many frees and twice as long a lunch break as anyone else.

Surely you can see that this would affect the amount of work you would have to take home?

The first few years that I was in teaching we were positively encouraged to re-use lesson planning where possible, obviously tweaked and adapted for each class.

For a couple of years I was actually making a few 'efficiency gains' - enjoying those moments when I realised that I could pull out succesful lessons from previous years.

But then came:

A change to a different year group
The Revised Numeracy Framework
The Revised Literacy Framework
Personalised learning
The creative curriculum.

...and it all went to pot.

In my last school (primary) we were supposed to plan from a blank sheet of paper, whereby every subject of the curriculum was integrated into an overall topic theme, which would arise from the children's interests.

Very, very time consuming in terms of planning.

Just in reading this thread I do get a sense that it is still more possible to re-use lessons/schemes of work in Secondary - although the marking load must be horrendous in some subjects.

Does PE teaching offer a good work-life balance? :)

Angels and Demons was very weird to read. The pace of the book was faster than the reading speed.

I know Dan Brown from school days and he has surprised most of us.

I think you possibly can reuse schemes of work more often in secondary. It would be a waste of my time and taxpayers money to create new lessons for the sake of it.

I am in my second year of teaching and am struggling, off sick at the moment with what is basically burnout, three weeks in! The workload is insane and nothing prepares you for it. This makes me sad as I actually love the teaching part of it. Go into it with your eyes open, the first few years will be tough and your DH will have to take a lot of the strain with the DCs. It is a wonderful job but I've yet to work out how to fit a life (and health) around it!